No surprise: WR Brandon Aiyuk headlines PFF grades for…

No surprise: WR Brandon Aiyuk headlines PFF grades for 49ers offense in Week 1

The 49ers offense in Week 1 picked up where it left off at the end of last regular season. San Francisco behind a career day from wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk averaged 5.9 yards per play and racked up 30 points in Pittsburgh.

It’s no surprise given Aiyuk’s 129 yards and two touchdowns that he was the 49ers’ highest-graded player by Pro Football Focus. He also showed off his value as a blocker with a huge block against Steelers safety Damontae Kazee to help spring running back Christian McCaffrey on a 65-yard touchdown.

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The performance was the first step toward the 2020 first-round pick making a leap in 2023 after posting his first-career 1,000-yard season in 2022.

In his conference call with reporters on Monday head coach Kyle Shanahan discussed how Aiyuk has elevated his level of play the last two years.

“More consistent. I thought he came a long way last year in that, as the year went, I think that’s why he ended up leading our team in receiving and he’s carried that into the offseason,” Shanahan said. “Didn’t know if he was going to get all those opportunities going to the game. You never know how it’s going to play out, but he got eight opportunities and he came down with all eight of them. That doesn’t always mean you get more. Sometimes that means you get more attention and they take it away, which helps out other people. So, you never know which direction it’s going to go each week. But the coolest thing about B.A. is how ready he came to play regardless. You see him on some of those run plays and stuff and from the beginning to the end. And usually when he is like that in the run game, it carries over to the pass game. The pass game’s just a little more out of your control, but yesterday it all fell to him and he was ready for the moment and had a big-time game.”

Aiyuk was the undisputed star of San Francisco’s offense in Week 1, but there were some other strong performances on that side of the ball. Here were PFF’s highest-graded players on offense for the 49ers in Sunday’s season opener: